Questions about PST file version

Question

This is a student who is trying to analyze PST file structure. While analyzing the file structure, I was curious and sent an email like this.

There are two versions of pst file format, ANSI and UNICode. My question is that the version of the pst file itself, not the pst file format, has been upgraded over time. For example, if a pst file created in Outlook 2013 is called A, and a pst file created in Outlook 2016 is called B, Outlook 2013 cannot open B. As such, as Outlook is upgraded, we know that the pst file version has been also upgraded. However, as a result of searching the internet, I could not find any information about the versions of pst itself. I wonder if the versions of pst itself are upgraded to the same versions of outlook, or is there any version of pst itself regardless of outlook version?

I'll wait for your reply.
Thank you for reading this mail.

Answer 1

Hi,

Q&A currently supports the products listed over here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/products (more to be added later on).

You can reach the experts in the dedicated Microsoft Outlook forum over here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/home?forum=outlook

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook

(Please don't forget to accept helpful replies as answer)

Best regards,
Leon

Answer 2

Hello,

PST is generally Outlook Personal Folders. You can import any PST files in any versions of Outlook or Exchange. In exchange server, you can import pst files in mailboxes with PowerShell cmdlets.
If you need to understand the PST format in more detail, here is the link with full documentation available

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_formats/ms-pst/141923d5-15ab-4ef1-a524-6dce75aae546

Please mark as "Accept the answer" if the above steps helps you. Others with similar issues can also follow the solution as per your suggestion

Regards,

Manu